JINAN, CHINA – Google Inc. said Chinese hackers targeted the Gmail accounts of hundreds of prominent people in a fresh computer attack certain to intensify growing concern about the security of the Internet.

The victims, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel, Chinese activists and journalists, were tricked into sharing their passwords with “bad actors” based in China, Google said in an unusual blog post reported by CNET News.Com. The attack’s goal was to read and forward the victims’ email.

Google said hundreds of Gmail users were tricked into sharing their passwords with “bad actors” based in China, potentially further complicating its relations with the country. Don Clark has details.

The company, which in 2010 blamed China for an attack on its computer networks, said it recently discovered the Gmail campaign, which “appears to originate from Jinan, China,” and targeted specific individuals.

In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security said they were working with Google to investigate the attacks. “We have no reason to believe that any official U.S. government email accounts were accessed,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

Jinan, a large city about 250 miles south of Beijing, is home to one of the People Liberation Army’s technical reconnaissance bureaus, which serve as arms of China’s equivalent of the National Security Agency, according to a 2009 report from a committee created by Congress to study China.

Since its entry into the Chinese-language world in 2000, U.S. search giant Google Inc. has struggled to balance its growth ambitions in the vast but restrictive new market while adhering to a self-held principle: “Don’t be evil.”

The goal of the latest hijacking campaign “seems to have been to monitor the contents of the these users’ emails” wrote Eric Grosse, an engineering director on Google’s security team, in Wednesday’s blog post. He said Google’s system wasn’t hacked, rather users were duped. He said the company notified victims of the hijackings, secured their accounts and “notified relevant government authorities.”

Google, which claims more than 200 million users for its free, Web-based Gmail email service, declined to comment on the identities of the affected individuals, how it traced the attacks to Jinan or who may be behind the incident.

The latest attack continues a troubling wave of incidents involving corporate and government computer networks, which have exposed private information of millions users and raised fears about the safety of government secrets. Last week, defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. said it had detected a significant attack against its computer networks.

Google’s latest disclosure didn’t mention the possibility of involvement by the government of China. Google’s systems have been repeatedly targeted by Chinese hackers since the successful attack in December 2009, said a person familiar with the matter. Chinese officials have denied any connection to attacks on Google or other companies.

By disclosing the latest attacks originated in Jinan and targeted U.S. officials, Chinese human-rights activists and other people “who would only be of interest to the Chinese government,” it appears “Google is pointing their finger at them,” said Alex Stamos, chief technology officer at security firm iSEC Partners.

Jinan is also home to the Shandong Jinan Lanxiang Vestibule School, a vocational school that teaches computer training. The school has been a source of past attempts to launch targeted email attacks on a defense contractor, said James Mulvenon, a cybersecurity specialist who focuses on China.

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